Our man Steve Plotnicki, the so-called “king of the bloggers,” saw his 100 Best Restaurants of North America & Europe come out today, and while it might not put the Zagats out of the dining-guide business quite yet, we have to say we’re behind the Opinionated About Dining man. Plotnicki’s distinctive approach is to use a weighted system, so that the opinion of someone like himself — a deep-pocketed trencherman who eats out 300 nights a year — counts more than someone who comes into the city only occasionally or whose dining habits are limited entirely to his or her own neighborhood. “The difference between us and Zagat will be obvious to anyone who picks up the book,” says Plotnicki, confidently.

The Man Who Ate the World, British restaurant critic Jay Rayner’s tour of the planet's great restaurant cities will be coming out soon, as Gawker noted yesterday. Its piece lingered over Super Mario’s latest profanity-laced anti-blogger tirade, which was almost as enjoyable as his last one. But having read the New York chapter, we were hit by how much other good stuff was in it.

We always wondered why Zagat has a monopoly on restaurant surveys. The same thought seems to have occurred to Steve Plotnicki, the man behind the blog Opinionated About Dining. Don't be fooled by OAD's resemblance to the rest of the blogger-with-a-digital-camera food sites. It hosts a very big and very vigorous private forum, whose members will be the backbone of a new book on the top 100 restaurants in America and Europe this March. The OAD members are deep-pocketed diners who eat all over the city, so the book’s core of opinions will be strong.
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